page_title: Steamboats on the Yangtze River
section_title: Commercial involvement
hierarchical_section_title: Steamboats on the Yangtze River / Commercial involvement
caption_attribution_description: IJN Izumo at Shanghai
context_page_description: After thousands of years of junk and sampan traffic on the Yangtze River, river steamers were introduced by Europeans during the mid- to late-nineteenth century. The age of the steamer
  lasted nearly 150 years—from 1835 to 1980—and had lasting impacts on China, where river trade was
  essential to the economy due to the poor road network and few railways.
context_section_description: The commercial firms of Jardine Matheson, Butterfield and Swire, and Standard Oil had their own steamers on the river. Until 1881, the India and China coastal and river services were operated by several companies. In that year, however, these were merged into the Indo-China Steam Navigation Company, Ltd., a public company under the management of Jardines. The Jardine company pushed inland up the Yangtze River on which a specially designed fleet was built to meet all requirements of the river trade. For many years, this fleet gave unequalled service. Jardines established an enviable reputation for the efficient handling of shipping. As a result, the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company invited the firm to attend to the Agency of their Shire Line which operated in the Far East.
  With the Treaty Ports, the European powers and Japan were allowed to float navy ships into China's internal waters. The British, US and French did this. A full international fleet featured on Chinese waters: Austro-Hungarians, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, and German navy ships came to Shanghai and the treaty ports. 
  The French Banque de l'Indochine was among the members of a western banking syndicate given control of China’s finances. French civil servants took control of China's postal service. In 1901 the French gunboat Orly was detached from the Far East Squadron for a cruise up the Yangtze Kiang, under the command of Lieutenant de Vaisseau Emile Hourst . The Olry was accompanied by the steam launch Takiang as far as Chunking which it reached on November 13, thus becoming the first French gunboat to reach the Upper Yangtze river. Subsequently, Lieutenant de Vaisseau Emile Hourst continued on in a vain search for an inland waterway linking Szechwan with Tonkin. The Olry very nearly was taken in a sinking in the Three Gorges in 1911. It hit the shore and damaged its rudder; out of control, it nearly foundered. However, excellent boatmanship and improvisation saved the day and the vessel. The Orly was followed by several French gunboats based in Shanghai and patrolling the Yangtze River up till the Second World War
  
  The Japanese engaged in open war with the Chinese twice, and Russians twice, over conquest of the Chinese Qing empire—in the First and Second Sino-Japanese War 1895, and 1905; and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904. Incidentally, both the French and Japanese navies were heavily involved in running Vietnamese opium and narcotics to Shanghai, where it was refined into morphine. It was then trans-shipped by liner back to Marseilles and France (i.e. French Connection) for processing in Germany and eventual sale in the US or Europe. 
  Steamers came late to the upper river. The Three Gorges had 404 individual rapids and the strong 15 knot current hindered navigation. Archibald Little attempted a voyage with the Lee-Chuan, and the Kuling, delays and weak engines meant that he only succeeded in the first vessel in 1898. Little soon built the first truly successful boat, the Pioneer, in about 1899. In 1898, Little persuaded Captain Samuel Cornell Plant to come out to China to lend his expertise. Captain Plant had just completed navigation of Persia's Upper Karun River and took up Little's offer to assess the Upper Yangtze on Leechuan at the end of 1898. With Plant's design input, Little had SS Pioneer built with Plant in command. In June 1900, Plant was the first to successfully pilot a merchant steamer on the Upper Yangtze from Yichang to ChongqingShe plied the river for two more decades and was even the flagship for the Royal Navy on the China Station. There were a few commercial steamers on the upper river at the turn of the century and the Boxer Rebellion period.
  In 1909 the gunboat USS Samar changed station to Shanghai, where she regularly patrolled the lower Yangtze River up to Nanking and Wuhu. Following anti-foreign riots in Changsha in April 1910, which destroyed a number of missions and merchant warehouses, Samar sailed up the Yangtze River to Hankow and then Changsa to show the flag and help restore order. The gunboat was also administratively 
caption: The Japanese Izumo in Shanghai in 1937; she sank riverboats in 1941
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